Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, novemberfore twenty twenty five. Sixty four percent of
Speaker 1: Australians say they want fewer immigrants to come to this country,
Speaker 1: and the sentiment is spread across all age groups. As
Speaker 1: support bleeds from the Coalition to Paul Enhnson's One Nation
Speaker 1: and Our Big Cities Sea anti immigration rallies. A new
Speaker 1: news poll shows widespread anxiety about the volume of Labour's intake.
Speaker 1: That exclusive is live now at the Australian dot Com.
Speaker 1: Dou Senior heads will roll at Optus over September's fatal
Speaker 1: triple O outage, Just not yet. That's the takeout from
Speaker 1: a Senate inquiry into the three deaths, including a baby,
Speaker 1: that resulted when emergency calls failed after the telco botched
Speaker 1: a routine network upgrade. Documents provided by Optus to the
Speaker 1: revealed it not only failed to properly inform the government
Speaker 1: or the Telecommunications Regulated what was happening, but failed to
Speaker 1: properly keep its own CEO in the loop. That's today's story.
Speaker 2: As a CEO, I'm accountable for Optus's failings and I'm
Speaker 2: deeply sorry.
Speaker 1: This is the boss of Optis, Stephen Rue, and he's
Speaker 1: talking to a Senate inquiry into how on earth OPTAs
Speaker 1: has failed in its obligation to connect people who call
Speaker 1: Triple O two emergency services, particularly on September eighteen, when
Speaker 1: three people died.
Speaker 2: We are all deeply sorry. The tragic events, the tragic
Speaker 2: deaths of people during this outage will stay with us
Speaker 2: as individuals and as a company as we investigate the
Speaker 2: incident and build on our response while progressing a sweeping
Speaker 2: transformation of Optus. I joined this company a year ago
Speaker 2: because I know it is important for Australia that op
Speaker 2: TO succeeds. When I arrived, Optus was implementing learnings from
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty two cyber attack and the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three national outage.
Speaker 1: Okay, so he's been busy, but Optus has been here before,
Speaker 1: and now rusays the companies identified ten failings that led
Speaker 1: to this disaster.
Speaker 2: The outage on September eighteen was not a complex system failure,
Speaker 2: but it was a unique circumstance where Triple zero was
Speaker 2: down while other cause continued normally. The initial mistake, a
Speaker 2: human error, occurred when the wrong process. Plan was selected
Speaker 2: for a routine firewall upgrade. The selected plan did not
Speaker 2: divert traffic before locking equipment inside the exchange that routes
Speaker 2: triple zero calls. This is an explanation, not an excuse.
Speaker 3: Always said it all.
Speaker 1: Or Jared Lynch is the Australian's Technology editor.
Speaker 3: He said it not that long ago when the Australian
Speaker 3: Competition and Consumer Commission sued Option for one hundred million
Speaker 3: dollars in one of Australia's biggest unconscionable conduct cases. This
Speaker 3: is when they know only sold plans to people they
Speaker 3: knew could not afford them. They sold a plan to
Speaker 3: a deaf man, They sold a phone plan to a
Speaker 3: homeless person, they sold a phone plan to a man
Speaker 3: with dementia. They've been here before. And Stephen Rue's response,
Speaker 3: and rightly so, is to acknowledge, apologize and then say
Speaker 3: he's working to rebuild public trust. But then this outage happened,
Speaker 3: and he said the same thing. What we need to
Speaker 3: see now is tangible action. How much money are they
Speaker 3: investing in capital expenditure to ensure that there isn't another
Speaker 3: triple zero outage? How much money are they spending in
Speaker 3: their network to build resilience, to ensure that people do
Speaker 3: not die again because they could not get help when
Speaker 3: they needed at most.
Speaker 1: The last time an CEO fronted parliamentarians in a crisis,
Speaker 1: she was out the door very shortly afterwards. Stephen Rue's
Speaker 1: predecessor quit in twenty twenty three after grilling at a
Speaker 1: very similar inquiry when optics and systems failed to prevent
Speaker 1: a giant hack of customers details and a national outage.
Speaker 3: I think calls that Stephen Rue should be sacked. You
Speaker 3: need to ask what will the end result be, What
Speaker 3: will it achieve? Will instigate the change that is required
Speaker 3: to ensure that people can rely on Optus when they
Speaker 3: need it most? Probably not? And the reason why is
Speaker 3: because there are clear systemic failures within Optus. We saw
Speaker 3: it in twenty twenty two with that big cyber attack
Speaker 3: which resulted in more than nine million Australians having their
Speaker 3: personal and sensitive information plunned it by hackers. We saw
Speaker 3: it twelve months later when there was that nationwide outage
Speaker 3: and more than two thousand people could not contact Triple zero.
Speaker 3: We saw it with the Unconscionable Conduct case, and only
Speaker 3: in September, we saw it again. The only difference was
Speaker 3: three people tragically lost their lives. The question is is
Speaker 3: Sintel Optice's Singaporean owner a fit and proper owner of
Speaker 3: Australian critical infrastructure. That is what the issue is, because
Speaker 3: that will go a long way to ensure the systemic
Speaker 3: failures with him Optus are addressed. Because the buck has
Speaker 3: to stop with the owner.
Speaker 1: Rusay's Optice has now taken serious steps to make sure
Speaker 1: this can never happen again.
Speaker 2: Every network change now requires explicit confirmation that emergency call
Speaker 2: rating is functioning, both before and after the work is completed.
Speaker 2: We've implemented twenty four to seven state by state monitoring
Speaker 2: of triple zero call failures, volumes and failure rates too
Speaker 2: enable faster detection of anomalies. Our contact center procedures have
Speaker 2: been overhauled, including a mandatory escalation process for any customer
Speaker 2: reports of triple zero issues, ensuring they're immediately referred to
Speaker 2: our network's team for investigation. We've introduced daily manual triple
Speaker 2: zero test calls in every state and territory.
Speaker 3: I think what we're seeing is what happens when offshoring.
Speaker 3: The loss of Australian's sovereignty. What happens when that goes
Speaker 3: horribly wrong. It wasn't that long ago that there used
Speaker 3: to be boots on the ground in like every phone
Speaker 3: exchange in every town. Well now there aren't those boots
Speaker 3: on the ground in not only the same town, but
Speaker 3: the same state and same country. I mean this was
Speaker 3: the result of engineers in Chennai, India who, in Stephen
Speaker 3: Rue's words, failed to follow the proper processes. And just
Speaker 3: to give you an idea, those processes aren't exactly rocket science.
Speaker 3: I was speaking to Tolco soon after Office's outage, and
Speaker 3: one of those processes is for an engineer with boots
Speaker 3: on the ground actually pick up the phone when they
Speaker 3: doing a software upgrade and call Triple zero to see
Speaker 3: if it's still working. This isn't high tech stuff. It's
Speaker 3: about having the capability within country to ensure that when
Speaker 3: you do these sorts of software upgrades, and you know
Speaker 3: there are thousands that happened each week heacross Australian telcos
Speaker 3: that when you do these upgrades, things don't go wrong
Speaker 3: and people don't lose their lives as a result.
Speaker 1: These inquiries are a search for truth, but they're also
Speaker 1: an opportunity for senators to get their high dudgeon on.
Speaker 1: Senator Sarah Hanson Young, a member of the Greens, turned
Speaker 1: the grilling to OPTUS chair John Arthur after it emerged
Speaker 1: ru wasn't informed by his own employees of the magnitude
Speaker 1: of the problem.
Speaker 4: Mister Arthur.
Speaker 5: But mister Arthur, you've heard all of this, and this
Speaker 5: says to me, your management team is not up to
Speaker 5: the job. And there was members of the team who
Speaker 5: knew that it was a whole lot worse, that they'd
Speaker 5: given misleading information, wrong information to the government. They knew
Speaker 5: that completing the welfare checks that two people had died,
Speaker 5: and their CEO was totally out of the loop.
Speaker 1: Like, how can you.
Speaker 5: Sit here as the chairperson of OPTAs and say that
Speaker 5: this executive team are doing their job.
Speaker 4: Senator, As the chief executive pointed out, there were I
Speaker 4: think ten failures here, ten failures And if you're asking
Speaker 4: me whether I am alarmed at that, I can assure
Speaker 4: you I am. However, this man was brought into this
Speaker 4: company to make sure we became a company that didn't
Speaker 4: have ten failures like that. That's his job. Now he's
Speaker 4: partway through this job, and I'm expecting him to finish
Speaker 4: it because I never in my life want to be
Speaker 4: in the position I'm in today where I have to
Speaker 4: answer these sorts of questions about a company I'm associated.
Speaker 5: With, or is there anyone else on the executive team
Speaker 5: who's going to get the sack, because from what I
Speaker 5: can see, there's been failure from the corporate communications element
Speaker 5: right through to the CEO.
Speaker 4: Senator, if you're asking me whether or not there will
Speaker 4: be accountabilities here, and accountabilities not just for junior people,
Speaker 4: then I can assure you that there will be.
Speaker 1: Coming up. Why the watchdog says it's not to blame.
Speaker 1: A couple of times during his evidence, Stephen Rue said
Speaker 1: the success of the system was on everyone.
Speaker 2: Telcos must make sure their own networks are reliable. That's
Speaker 2: on each of us. But we must also ensure the
Speaker 2: backup systems like camp On, which is a credit. The
Speaker 2: mobile network function that allows a mobile phone to connect
Speaker 2: to the Triple zero emergency call service using another carrier's
Speaker 2: network when the user's own network is unavailable also works
Speaker 2: for Australians. That's on all of us as an industry,
Speaker 2: including telco's, the device manufacturers, the industry, the regulator and government.
Speaker 1: But the regulators not copying the blame. Narita or Lauchlan,
Speaker 1: chair and Agency head of the Australian Communications in Media Authority,
Speaker 1: was grilled by Sarah Hanson Young.
Speaker 5: Octors clearly don't think they have to inform you of
Speaker 5: serious outages or the numbers of the numbers don't matter,
Speaker 5: and they obviously didn't think that they have an illegal
Speaker 5: obligation to inform you of whether there's a deadly result.
Speaker 5: And doesn't that say something about how they view you
Speaker 5: as a regulator And they clearly don't take you.
Speaker 4: Seriously, Senator, that's a question you have to put d
Speaker 4: opts not to me.
Speaker 5: They're arguing that regulatory requirements they had fulfilled. But because
Speaker 5: you didn't pick up the phone and you didn't chase
Speaker 5: them up, they've been let off the hook, Senator.
Speaker 3: They won't be let off the hook. They're the police,
Speaker 3: they're the regulator. They should have been watching them very
Speaker 3: very closely to ensure that the changes that they said
Speaker 3: that they were adopting across their network to ensure such
Speaker 3: an outage did not happen. Again, those changes were actually happening.
Speaker 3: It's not like it was unprecedented. It wasn't that long
Speaker 3: ago that we had an outage of similar proportions. The regulator,
Speaker 3: the police should have been doing their job, monitoring optors closely.
Speaker 3: For them to say well, it's not our fault. Opt
Speaker 3: has failed, not us, that just doesn't wash.
Speaker 1: Joe Lynch is The Australian's Technology editor. You can check
Speaker 1: out all our reporting and analysis from Jared reported, Quailing
Speaker 1: Canbra and the team right now at the Australian dot
Speaker 1: Com dot a hu